Com. v. Garcia

• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
• Writing for the Court: Before HENNESSEY; QUIRICO; LIACOS
• Citation: 379 Mass. 422,399 N.E.2d 460
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Carlos GARCIA.
• Decision Date: 08 January 1980

Page 460

399 N.E.2d 460 379 Mass. 422 COMMONWEALTH
v.
Carlos GARCIA. Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester. Argued Sept. 10, 1979.
Decided Jan. 8, 1980.

Page 462

[379 Mass. 424] Richard J. Vita, Dorchester, for defendant.

Daniel F. Toomey, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.

Before [379 Mass. 422] HENNESSEY, C. J., and QUIRICO, BRAUCHER, LIACOS and ABRAMS, JJ.

[379 Mass. 424] QUIRICO, Justice.

The defendant Carlos Garcia was convicted of murder in the second degree after a trial by jury in 1970. The judge imposed the statutory sentence of life imprisonment. At trial, Garcia admitted killing the victim, Francisco Alvarado, but claimed that he had acted in self-defense. The case is now before us in a consolidated appeal under G.L. c. 278, §§ 33A-33G, assigning alleged errors during the trial and in the denial of the 1977 motion for a new trial (G.L. c. 278, § 29). ¹ The principal questions presented

Page 463

for our consideration are the following: (1) whether Garcia's difficulty communicating with his non-Spanish speaking trial attorney deprived him of his right to effective assistance of counsel or his right of confrontation, (2) whether the judge erred in admitting Garcia's admissions and confession in evidence, and (3) whether the judge erred in instructing the jury on reasonable doubt and on the burden of proof of voluntariness of Garcia's statements. We affirm the conviction.

We briefly summarize the evidence presented at the 1970 trial. ² At approximately 4:30 P.M. on July 9, 1970, Garcia was involved in a dice game near Main Street in Worcester [379 Mass. 425] with several other persons. At some point one Leonides Baez accused Garcia of playing with loaded dice. An altercation ensued, during which Garcia struck Baez. Garcia then went to his home at 4 Kilby Street in Worcester, and about thirty minutes later, on the street near his home, he encountered Baez's sisters, Carmen and Marta; the victim Francisco Alvarado; and Alvarado's brother. The Baezes and the Alvarados began yelling at Garcia, and Garcia struck Carmen Baez. The Alvarados and Garcia then engaged in a fist fight, after which Garcia retreated toward his house.

The next day, July 10, Garcia went to Carmen Baez's house. He told her he wanted no problems with anyone, and apologized for what he had done. Carmen refused to forgive him and told him they were not afraid of him. Garcia then went to a place where he had hidden a gun that he had purchased from a "hippie" and he loaded it and put it in his pants. He also put six or seven extra bullets in his pocket and proceeded to Main Street, near Monihan's Cafe. While walking past Monihan's, he saw Francisco Alvarado, the victim, who said to him, "I owe you one from last night," or words to that effect. Garcia saw nothing in Alvarado's hands, but Alvarado then reached for his back pocket. Garcia thought Alvarado was reaching for a "knife or something," and thereupon he took the gun from his pants and began firing at Alvarado. He continued to fire after Alvarado put both hands on his stomach and began to fall. Witnesses saw Garcia fire three times after Alvarado was on the ground. The State pathologist testified that there were two bullet entrance wounds in the front of the victim's body and three in the back, and that one of the bullets entering from the rear penetrated the heart and caused death. Garcia conceded during his testimony that he could have run away from Alvarado, "but I didn't because I was scared."

Immediately following the shooting, Garcia ran, hid the gun and then went to look for a policeman. He found a plainclothes police officer, to whom he said, "I did it, I did it," before the officer spoke. The officer (Healey) asked Garcia if he understood English, and received an affirmative[379 Mass. 426] answer. No other conversation was had at that point. Healey placed Garcia in a police cruiser, where Officer Conrad asked him if he understood English, received an affirmative response, and informed him of his Miranda rights. Conrad then asked him where the gun was, and Garcia led the officers to it. At the location where he had hidden the gun, he was again informed of his Miranda rights and he again said that he understood them.

Shortly thereafter, the officers took Garcia to the police station, where he was again read his Miranda rights in English and in Spanish. A Spanish speaking police officer (Guittar) interpreted for him throughout the interrogation, and Garcia gave the police a signed statement concerning the

Page 464

shooting. Officer Guittar translated the written statement for Garcia before the latter signed it.

Several of Garcia's alleged errors hinge on his claimed difficulty in speaking and understanding English in 1970. He contends that he is entitled to relief by reason of this language difficulty as it bears upon the questions (a) whether he waived his rights under the decision of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), (b) whether his statements to the police shortly before and after the time of his arrest were voluntary, and (c) whether he was denied the right to effective assistance of counsel in preparation for and during his trial, with resulting denial of rights of due process and of confrontation. Because of the claimed language difficulty we have scrutinized the record with special care. It reveals that Garcia was not fluent in English at the time of his trial in 1970, but that he spoke and understood some English. The basic question for our decision in this regard is whether his language difficulty operated to deprive him of any constitutional right or of a fair trial. We shall review the evidence concerning Garcia's facility with the English language further as we discuss each of the issues in which that may be a factor.

1. Application of and compliance with Miranda decision. We are concerned here with three separate statements made by Garcia to the Worcester police, all of which the judge admitted in evidence at the trial.

[379 Mass. 427] The first such statement was Garcia's spontaneous exclamation to Officer Healey, "I did it, I did it." Since Healey had said nothing to Garcia, who was not then in custody or even under suspicion, this statement was clearly admissible without proof of any prior Miranda warnings, and Garcia does not claim otherwise. ³ Commonwealth v. Ladetto, 349 Mass. 237, 243-244, 207 N.E.2d 536 (1965). Cf. Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. at 444, 478, 86 S.Ct. 1602; Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 490-491, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964); Commonwealth v. Glavin, 354 Mass. 69, 72-73, 235 N.E.2d 547 (1968); Commonwealth v. Kerrigan, 349 Mass. 295, 298-299, 207 N.E.2d 882 (1965); Commonwealth v. Swenor, 3 Mass.App. 65, 68, 323 N.E.2d 742 (1975); Commonwealth v. Roy, 2 Mass.App. 14, 18, 307 N.E.2d 851 (1974).

We next consider two separate statements made by Garcia after he was taken in custody by the police. One consisted of his conversation with the police when they first took him in custody and, at his direction, drove him to the spot where he pointed to the gun which he had hidden there after shooting Alvarado. The other consisted of a written statement which he signed at the police station, admitting that he "took the gun out of (his) pants and shot (Francisco Alvarado) . . . three or four times." Although both of these statements were made by Garcia before he was formally booked by the police, we treat them as made in the course of custodial interrogation. We treat custody as having begun at the moment when the police first placed Garcia in the cruiser. Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602. Commonwealth v. Haas, 373 Mass. 545, --- - --- ^a, 369 N.E.2d 692 (1977). From that moment he was not free to leave.

The admissibility of these two statements made by Garcia while in custody and without benefit of counsel gives rise to several questions. The first is whether Garcia truly understood his Miranda rights (given to him in English in the cruiser and both in English and in Spanish at the police station) in order to be capable of waiving them "knowingly and intelligently," and, if not, whether the police were entitled[379 Mass. 428] to rely on Garcia's continued assurances that he did understand. The next question is whether any waiver by Garcia of his rights was voluntary. The question of the voluntariness of the waiver of those rights and that

Page 465

of the voluntariness of the statements which Garcia made to the police may be interrelated, but they are separate and distinct questions. The former is whether the Miranda requirement of warnings was scrupulously observed and whether Garcia knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily waived the rights covered by the warnings. The latter is whether Garcia's statements were made freely and voluntarily when considering the "totality of the circumstances" in which they were made. Procunier v. Atchley, 400 U.S. 446, 453, 91 S.Ct. 485, 27 L.Ed.2d 524 (1971). Delle Chiaie v. Commonwealth, 367 Mass. 527, 533, 327 N.E.2d 696 (1975). The inquiry into whether a statement was made freely and voluntarily is the same whether it arises under the Miranda rule or whether it arises in the determination of whether a confession was made freely and voluntarily. Commonwealth v. Cruz, 373 Mass. 676, --- - --- ^b, 369 N.E.2d 996 (1977). Commonwealth v. Mahnke, 368 Mass. 662, 679-680, 335 N.E.2d 660 (1975), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 959, 96 S.Ct. 1740, 48 L.Ed.2d 204 (1976).

When the judge denied the motion to suppress Garcia's in custody statements to the police, he made no report of facts found in support of his ruling. We emphasize once again the importance of findings of subsidiary facts in such a situation. Commonwealth v. Hosey, 368 Mass. 571, 574 n.1, 334 N.E.2d 44 (1975). We have remanded some cases to the trial court with instructions to make such findings, but we do not do so in this case because the judge did make limited...